


Heirs of the Alliance

by amako



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Genderfluid Uzumaki Naruto, Hiashi is trying, M/M, Mental Instability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shikaku and Yoshino are awesome, Team as Family, Time Travel Fix-It, Underage Drinking, Violence, technically cause they're still twenty in their head
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 12:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14135745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amako/pseuds/amako
Summary: "Sakura nods without a word. Shikamaru's knuckles are dirty with the blood still drying on her face. Feeling her heart shattering bit by bit, she gently takes her friend's hand and slowly cleans the stains on the soft skin. Shikamaru lets her, a broken expression marking his features. They won't cry. There are no tears to waste after weeks of fighting. No more tears when you're not even sure who's dead and who's still alive."





	Heirs of the Alliance

The inn is an alien, standing between to ruins and three charnel-houses. The sign moves miserably in the wind, a large kunai-made crack preventing from reading the name of the place. Broken chairs lay in the dust where the terrace once was. The walls are darkened by fire jutsu and the few scattered planks are stained with old blood. It's the only building still standing in the next fifty miles.

The fighters left the inn untouched, like a last memory of what once was et will never be again. No one could say no to a night spent drinking the war away, when enemy blood makes your hair sticky and remains of cerebral matter rolls down your jōnin jacket.

The inn's owner is a fourteen-year-old boy. Both his parents died in the war and the only thing that saved him from being sent with the troops is his missing hand and burned left eye. When you come inside the small inn, there is a warm smile welcoming the tired shinobi. No one screams, no one argues. The inn is a safe haven outside of time itself that no one dared disturb yet.

Sitting at a wobbly table in a corner of the room, Haruno Sakura is finishing her third bottle of sake. Far from being drunk, she waves her hand to ask a fourth. The boy brings it to her, used to the horrifying tolerance that shinobi display when they stop at the inn.

The jōnin is in poor state. Even compared to other customers, she looks miserable. Her green jacket is drying on the back of her chair. It has rained all week but water isn't what takes so look to evaporate from the discoloured fabric. Her pink hair is black with the coal and blood they bath in every day. Just like every other fighter, she will wash when she comes back to camp, and it hasn't happened in eight days.

Her face is a battlefield where cuts are the trenches, her skin barely visible under the dried haemoglobin, cracked around her mouth and eyes. She's been sloppy with the last artery she slit and the blood spilled everywhere. She didn't have time to wipe it because there still was six men around her at the time. She regrets it now; it itches.

Sakura fills her glass one more time and empties it in one go. The cheap sake leaves a cold feeling in her mouth. Her eyes are still closed when her whole body tenses up. She puts down the cup, pretending like nothing's wrong, and her hand wraps around a kunai strapped to her thigh. The chair on her right doesn't make any sound when it's pulled back. She doesn't try to hide her relieved sigh when she recognizes who is sitting next to her. Her fingers release slowly the hilt of her weapon and she turns to give a bitter smile to her friend.

Nara Shikamaru looks like a prince next to her. His ponytail remains untouched, barely a few strands escaping from it. No blood, no dust on his face, even if his flack jacket lost its original colour to multiple washings and gets closer to a dirty brown. Sakura stays silent when she notices how bad his hands are shaking. She fills her cup and gives it to him before calling to the boy for a second one.

Shikamaru drinks the alcohol slower than her, but still empties the cup frightenly fast. Sakura's lips press in a flat line at the blank expression on her friend's face. She takes back her cup with a defeated sigh and pours herself some more sake. She will need it, because she knows what the blank face means.

 

"Who?" She whispers, her voice rough and cracking.

"Temari."

 

The cup explodes in her hand. She forces herself to call back her chakra, her monstrous strength getting back to slightly less terrifying levels. She swallows around the lump in her throat, still unable to process what she just heard. Shikamaru hasn't moved, his face still frozen and eyes unblinking.

 

"An unknown jutsu ripped her fan. She was a hundred feet above the ground. All we could do was watch her crash."

"Okay."

"Gaara went mad. He slaughtered every fighter around him with his sand. I don't know if anyone told Kankuro."

"Gaara is Kazekage, and he leads our army. He might be Kankuro's and Temari's brother, but he can't slip like that."

 

The fist that almost breaks her jaw isn't a surprise. She's been knowingly insensitive to provoke him. Shikamaru needed to hear it and needed to punch something. It isn't in his nature and she has no problem forcing it out of him. She gently touches her jaw to assess the damage, but doesn't use her chakra to heal herself.

 

"Fuck you, Sakura. Seriously."

"I'm far from being stupid, but you, my friend, are a genius. You know exactly why I said that."

"Why do you think I'm asking you to shut up?"

"You need to punch someone. I'm here and you'll have a hard time making permanent damage. So why not?"

"I just lost my girlfriend. I really don't want to hit my friend on top of that."

 

Sakura nods without a word. Shikamaru's knuckles are dirty with the blood still drying on her face. Feeling her heart shattering bit by bit, she gently takes her friend's hand and slowly cleans the stains on the soft skin. Shikamaru lets her, a broken expression marking his features. They won't cry. There are no tears to waste after weeks of fighting. No more tears when you're not even sure who's dead and who's still alive.

They lost Ino, best friend and teammate, and her death brought them close. Then Neji died, protecting Hinata who couldn't forgive herself. Shino sacrificed himself so that Kiba could bring back a report to the camp. Tenten had taken a blow for Sakura as she was healing Gai. Her last words were thanks for saving her teacher. Gai died anyway.

No more tears to waste.

 

The three sake bottles turn into four, then five, and the two friends are now sharing the sixth. Sakura is starting to feel it, but she knows how much she can hold her liquor and she's not even close to her limit. Shikamaru looks more serious than usual, which, in his case, means that he's completely wasted.

Their talk had quickly gone to less personal subjects, if only because there is only so much tears they can long for in one evening. They're now talking about the exact same thing as everyone around them: the war. It's easier to deal with when you're not naming every friend you had that died trying to make it stop.

 

"And you know what's worst? I don't know how many. Maybe if you'd asked me two years ago, I could have told you exactly how many people I've killed. But somewhere on the road, I've lost count and I just... kept going. Now, when I rip someone's throat with my bare hands, I'm thinking about the lemon I'm going to put on my uniform to get the blood out. When did we stop counting?"

"Sometime between the Academy and the jōnin promotion.”

“I never thought I'd make jōnin one day. We didn't even have to take the exam.”

“Ah, field promotions. Congrats, you killed one hundred people, you're officially jōnin!”

“We're all going to end up with ANBU level, seeing how this is going.”

“And a psychological bill that's going to ruin us all.”

 

The borderline hysterical laugh Sakura can't hold back sees a few people looking at them from their corner of the room. One look at her bloody face is enough to have them look away. She's just one more shinobi going crazy, nothing to focus on for too long. She might be the Hokage's apprentice, she's just as sensitive to madness as the others.

 

“Yesterday, I killed a girl who was in labour. I don't think she was more than fourteen and she was four-month pregnant. Her kid must have died inside of her. I broke her neck.”

Shikamaru doesn't look at her. “Finish the bottle.”

“When I heal people on the battlefield, I have to ask myself first if they can go back to fighting as soon as I'm done. If the answer is no, I let them die.”

Shikamaru still doesn't look at her. “Hey kid, can we have another bottle?”

“There was seven-year-old in the squad attacking us this afternoon. That's her blood on my face.”

“Sakura, stop.” His eyes are finally on her, and they're burning her skin. She stares at his grief-stricken face. Her own is blank.

 

“I'm going crazy, Shikamaru.”

“I know.”

“We won't survive long like this.”

“I know.”

 

Sakura empties an umpteenth glass. The inn's door opens loudly and a small figure runs in their direction. Shikamaru and Sakura share a glance before emptying the bottle straight from the bottleneck, one half each. The child arrives at their table a second later.

They both frown. He's not wearing any forehead protector and looks healthy. Two things that immediately casts him out as 'not on our side'. A healthy child, though? They can't remember the last time they've seen one.

 

“What do you want?” Sakura asks.

“ I have a scroll for your.”

“Who sent you?”

“Can't tell, sorry. Take the scroll, you'll know everything.”

 

Then he turns around and runs away as fast as he got inside. Sakura scans the scroll with chakra but doesn't find anything suspicious. It's a normal scroll and she almost finds it more worrying than a bomb hidden in the seal. She opens it and gets closer to Shikamaru so he can read with her.

Her eyebrows shoot up. A jutsu? Why would a kid bring them a scroll explaining a new technique? And what is that jutsu about? She can't recognize half of the symbols and it's way more complicated for either of their fūinjutsu skill.

She barely has time to look at Shikamaru before a titanic strength pulls her backward. A violent vertigo shakes her and she doesn't even have time to feel dizzy before falling unconscious.

 

 

 


End file.
